


The Butterfly in the Hurricane

by Red_Cheshire



Category: Original Work
Genre: Attempted Brainwashing, Becoming a wind elemental, Child Abuse, Compliance is NOT an Option, Corrupted Holy Ground, Creepy Villain, Fantasy setting, Friends In Unlikely Places, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Living Shadows, Mysticism, Past Torture, Resistance, Small Acts of Resistance, Smug Snake, Survival, Villain based on sith lord, When The Wind Is Your Only Ally Become The Storm, forced imprisonment, keep going.”, “If you're going through hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 01:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8267458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Cheshire/pseuds/Red_Cheshire
Summary: The child wrote her heart onto a thousand pages of paper. It had taken a long time but she’d sought the sun and dragged herself into the light. She was the wind and storm and she would never be bound again.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was playing this song (Puscifer - The Humbling River) on repeat for most of the writing process:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0YxeTjFn70

When she was young a man had given her a choice; to stay with her family in the ashes or to follow him to cities and temples. He offered a childhood without hunger and the chance of knowledge and study. Her mother had encouraged her to accept, and her brother cheered at her good fortune.

He had lied and tricked them all. For he was not a man, he was a monster, and the monster wanted to bury her in shadows and make a monster from her bones.

For years upon years she was imprisoned within the ancient temple. A shadowy place full of the echoes of time, what had once been filled with the symphony of hundreds of minds was no longer. The hollowness called out into the dark, keening and pleading for anything to fill the void and bring life back to its empty depths.

Shadows clung to every surface and the hungry voices of never-was and never-were scratched at her mind. Black chains burned her skin and lessons were beaten into her with the burning bite of lightning. Oh how she hated.

The monster who called himself her master tried to break her, to shatter her soul into pieces and reshape her into a monster, just like him. She did not falter, she did not break, and on those nights she went hungry.

There was no day within the hollowed, heartless, temple and almost-living shadows quashed the light of the few lanterns the monster permitted.

But there was still the wind, the soft breezes that made their way through the temple and coiled around her feet and hair. Their carried whispers were a great comfort and she held them close on the nights her voice was hoarse from screaming.

The cool breezes twisted around her inflamed wrists, soothing the aching burns, while she took in their kindly murmurs and tasted their weightless secrets. Even the darkness could not keep out the sound of rain and the rumble of thunder.

Deep in the shadows a girl had been trapped, and in the deep silence of the hungering dark a storm was brewing. In his hunger her would-be master honed her to a knifes edge. In his greed the monster unknowingly gave her a key.

The monster sought to make her as monstrous as him, while the wind wanted nothing. As her hatred for him grew so did her grasp of the tempest and her longing for the sun. The darkened abyss was cruelty incarnate, and through blood and fire and cursed lightning the shadows tempered her. The middling breezes were but wisps of greater winds, wild and reckless. Change was inevitable.

Change was inevitable, but the wind and storm were free. Her wrath and rage could find no better example.

For years the monster had held her prisoner within the tainted temple, for years she had fought him, unbent and unbowed. Voiceless shadows answered his call, the abyssal darkness trying to drown her. Each and every night she met his gaze, the light in her eyes enduring and uncrushed.

The rebellion in her veins was never a silent thing. It roared through her heart and mind, growing all the more as she wove vortexes in empty rooms and mastered the secrets of the wind.

The storm thrummed beneath her skin, the monster deaf to her concealed defiance, deaf to the growing storms beneath his snarls and roars as the shadows failed to take her. The monster, as broken and twisted as he wanted to make her, was a hungry and greedy thing. His gnashing hunger and cruelty blinded him to his would-be student. He failed to see the boundless love and endless rage as deep as her bones.

Blind to her heart and deaf to her strength the monster, her would-be master, was unprepared to defend himself as she ripped the air from his lungs. Wild winds howled through the hollow temple, rending shadows apart, as chains were torn from stone.

For the first time in years the temple was truly silent, the hungry echoes frozen in shock from her violent reprisal. The living shadows slinked away, crawling and cowering away in dark corners, cowering away from the gale that tore out their empty heart.

The girl, the child, the storm-in-flesh, skulked through the blessedly still corridors as she followed the breeze, winds roiling around her and electricity crackling along her skin. She could feel the gates, torn from the hinges, before she saw them, the warmth-yet-to-come near alien to her after so long.

The once-child drew a ragged breathe at the pink clouds and golden glow and sobbed in relief as she watched the dawnrise.


End file.
